TOM McKEOWN – AUTHOR OF THE BOOK, “THIS IS PANTHER COUNTRY: A MEMOIR OF YOUTH, UNDERDOG SPIRIT, AND BASKETBALL GLORY” – EPISODE 1108

Website – https://www.tommckeownbooks.com/

Email – tom@tommckeown.net

Twitter/X – @tommckeown

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Tom McKeown is the author of This Is Panther Country: A Memoir of Youth, Underdog Spirit, and Basketball Glory, a classic underdog story of a high school basketball team’s quest for glory and a young man’s journey of growth, family, and determination. Set against the vibrant backdrop of mid-1970s Long Island, New York the book captures the excitement, challenges, and camaraderie of a small-town varsity basketball team and its dreams of triumph.  Told from Tom’s vantage point in the eighth grade, he and the Village of Babylon follow their varsity basketball team, the Panthers, as they fight their way forward in hopes of claiming the first ever Long Island Championship.

On this episode Mike & Tom discuss why the 1970s marked a pivotal era for basketball on Long Island, characterized by the emergence of local talents and the establishment of a championship that would forever change the landscape of high school sports in the region. This episode delves into the compelling narrative of Tom McKeown’s memoir, “This Is Panther Country,” which chronicles the inspiring journey of a small-town high school basketball team striving for glory against formidable opponents. Through McKeown’s perspective as a young eighth grader, we explore the camaraderie, challenges, and triumphs that defined the season leading to the first-ever Long Island Championship. The discussion highlights not only the athletic prowess displayed but also the profound impact of that period on the community and the personal growth of those involved. Join us as we reflect on this extraordinary chapter in sports history, infused with the spirit of determination and the essence of youth.

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Have your notebook handy as you listen to this episode with Tom McKeown, author of This Is Panther Country: A Memoir of Youth, Underdog Spirit, and Basketball Glory.

What We Discuss with Tom McKeown

• “This Is Panther Country”, narrates an inspiring underdog story of high school basketball
• The 1970s marked a significant period for basketball on Long Island, showcasing remarkable talent
• How Tom’s childhood experiences shaped his love for basketball
• The essence of a small town’s connection to its basketball team and community
• The first Long Island basketball championship occurred in 1975, changing the landscape of local sports forever
• How the narrative intertwines Tom’s personal reflections with historical context, enhancing the reader’s understanding of the era
• The cultural dynamics of Long Island during a transformative decade for basketball
• How social connections in sports fostered community spirit
• Writing the book involved fact-checking with former teammates
• Nostalgia plays a key role in connecting with readers
• Family relationships are often intertwined with sports experiences
• High school memories are universal and relatable
• The impact of a coach extends beyond the court

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High school and middle school basketball program directors, listen closely. Coaches are expected to do far more than just coach. You know this. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing the coaching yourself, or you have a full staff of coaches with you. You know very well that coaches handle scheduling, academic issues, parent communication, leadership development, and even mental health concerns for athletes. A lot to deal with, and they haven’t even gone home yet to balance those responsibilities.

No matter the passion for the game, and burning desire to help athletes develop, this level of responsibility can lead to burnout, inefficiency, and less time spent on actual coaching. You know it’s true.

When coaches are stretched too thin, it impacts the development of athletes, team morale, and the overall success of the program. Now here comes the outsiders throwing their two cents in about what’s happening. Then come the parents complaining about how you’re running things, as if they know what they’re talking about. When’s the last time you went to their place of work chiming in from outside their window?

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Instead of coaches constantly reminding players about assignments, grades, and practice schedules, our programs at Playmaker Planner puts the responsibility back on the athletes. By tracking their own academics, goals, and commitments, student-athletes become more self-sufficient, which of course allows the coach to put their babysitter hat in the closet, and put their coaching hat back on, allowing them to focus on what they love doing.

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THANKS, TOM MCKEOWN

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TRANSCRIPT FOR TOM McKEOWN – AUTHOR OF THE BOOK, “THIS IS PANTHER COUNTRY: A MEMOIR OF YOUTH, UNDERDOG SPIRIT, AND BASKETBALL GLORY” – EPISODE 1108

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello, and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle tonight, and we are pleased to welcome in the author of the book. This is Panther Country, Tom McKeown. Tom, welcome to the Hoop Heads Pod.

[00:00:16] Tom McKeown: Oh, pleasure to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

[00:00:19] Mike Klinzing: Thrilled to have you on, looking forward to giving you an opportunity to share some of the great stories that make up the book.

This is Panther Country. We’re going to start by just having you give the quick synopsis of the book for people who want to pick up a copy. Just tell ’em what they’re going to be reading about and why don’t we start out with where they can find the book. And then we’ll dive into the author and his story and then get into the book itself.  So, Tom, take it away.

[00:00:47] Tom McKeown: Well, the book available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, pretty much anywhere you can get books, there’s a bunch of distributors, so they can order it into your local bookstore if you like. What the book is. 50 years ago they played the first ever Long Island basketball Championship and I grew up on Long Island in Suffolk County.

Back in, back in those days, the highest you could ever go before that year was to win a county championship in New York. They never had a state championship and really until 1980, but this was the first year they let two counties play each other. And since there only two counties on Long Island, it became Long Island Championship and.

My school, Babylon High School, was one of the smallest schools on Long Island, and they got into a pretty good run there. So I tell the story from my point of view as an eighth grader, I was 13. I looked up to all the varsity players and I tell the story also as a coming of age story of me growing up as an eighth grader on Long Island in a small town.

And what was going on then and the, to the backdrop of the team going on this incredible run.

[00:01:51] Mike Klinzing: Tell us a little bit about growing up. Babylon life as a basketball. Growing up in the era that you did, you’re just a couple years older than me, but I’m guessing that the way we grew up is similar compared to the way the kids grow up today.

You and I had a lot more freedom to be out and be playing, pick up basketball and be playing backyard football and be playing baseball at the Sandlot, all those kinds of things that kids today maybe don’t get an opportunity to do as much. But just talk a little about your childhood kind of leading up.

When the book kind of takes over the story, if that makes sense.

[00:02:31] Tom McKeown: Yeah. So I always talk about my, the year of my sports consciousness or awakening was 1969. I was living in New York, and that was kind of the year, right around over 18 month span. We had the Jets won it, the Mets won it, and the Nicks won it.

I was drawn to basketball, mainly Wealth. Frazier was my idol. Back then, he was a guard on the Knicks. And that was I was about 10 or 11, so I started playing basketball. We had, we had a couple of very good public courts in the, in the neighborhood where we could go and  pick up games whenever you wanted.

It was a small school, as I said in the district. So there was the town of Babylon, which had eight high schools. And I grew up in the village of Babylon, which is actually the second smallest of those eight. And that’s eight of the 20 high schools on Long Island. And when I got into junior high school, I tried out for the basketball team.

I made it in the seventh and the eighth grade years, and we had a pretty good team my seventh grade year. But then the eighth grade my eighth grade year the, the varsity started to look pretty good and we had only one, school all the way up. So for example there was one elementary school, one grade school, and then the junior high, senior high was in one building.

So I was going with the same class of people from kindergarten all the way up to senior year. So you got to know everybody really well. I. A, a couple of the big stars on the varsity basketball team had younger brothers that I played with, and they were among my close friends and  we kind of clustered together, followed them around.

But  it got into this really great era of basketball for our, for our our school. And it was consuming and it was wonderful the way that town kind of took to it. Of course, everybody likes a winner, but it was always a great, it was always a great spirit in the village to follow the, the sports teams and, the, the, the village where I grew up is probably four miles cattycorner, one end to the other. But we rode our bicycles everywhere, across everybody’s house. And the the, the, the village itself was very I’d say advanced as far as being integrated. We had a race was still an issue on Long Island.

I talk a little bit about that on the book. One high school on one of our borders was all white and one high school, and another one of our borders was all black. We, we had a mix in our school, but everybody seemed to  get along and not really make anything of that.

[00:04:44] Mike Klinzing: Talk about that social through line that kind of runs throughout the book in terms of just the connection between, I know a couple of the guys that played on the varsity, you had their brothers that played with you on your junior high team, and as you said, because.

You had grades seven through 12, all in the same building. There was sort of this social connection that maybe in other school districts where the schools were separated and maybe you didn’t have the, the siblings that were on the two teams, there might not have been a much of a connection. Just, just talk a little bit about sort of the social connection amongst all the kids and kind of how that put you in some situations throughout the book that maybe you wouldn’t have been in, had you been in a more, I guess, normal environment.

[00:05:29] Tom McKeown: Yeah. Well there were there were two two families of brothers who were kind of the pillars of the basketball teams back then. One was the Farleys. There were two on the varsity. There was one on my junior high team. And then there was one that had played and had already graduated.

And there was a very similar with the Vicar family. One my year two were playing on varsity. One had graduated and was playing in college. Older of the two brothers on the team. Glen was the real superstar in the, in the team. It was a, it was a team of great. Great talent surrounding like this really once in a generation player and his younger brother, Ernie, we kind of always managed to collect over at his house across town.

And  so you talk a little bit about  you’re in seventh grade and eighth grade and you’re going to school with 11th and 12th graders. So we probably ended up at a lot of. Parties and gatherings we probably shouldn’t have been at, at our age. And if we were in a, an area where  there was junior high, middle school and high school we probably wouldn’t have heard of those things.

And if the district was bigger we wouldn’t be that far to just stroll by these houses that were, the parents were out and they were throwing a big party.

[00:06:39] Mike Klinzing: What do you remember in terms of just your connection with watching those guys play and how. Get that feeling of connection that like, hey, I really am, am starting to witness something special.

And I know you talk about it a little bit in the book in terms of obviously that connection with the siblings and, and growing up and being, being a kid who was interested in basketball. But, but when did you and the rest of the community sort of sense that there was something special going on with that particular team?

[00:07:13] Tom McKeown: Well to start out, I, I’d take it back to the coach. The, the coach of the varsity, a guy named Roy Cobel still alive today, 91. Still a credible personality. He had kind of built the program, almost all the way down to the seventh grade. He actually even had been a gym teacher in the grade school and he managed to get all of the levels on the same page.

So we were all running the same offense from seventh grade all the way up to senior high. And it, it was evolving it more and it, it was called the two three offense. And it had a little bit of a triangle offense into it that  eventually got used by pros and college teams. So he is a real visionary in that respect.

Going into the year, we, we, we thought we were going to be pretty good. We had been good the year before, but we got knocked out of the county playoffs in the first round. So this year we were thinking we were  going to go one step better. But turned out we had a really competitive Suffolk County, before we even get to Long Island, had eight leagues in it. They each had about eight to 10 teams in it. We were in League five and we just, we had a really tough league. I’d say we probably had three of the top five teams in the county when you look at it at the end of the year in that league. And we had a, a couple of brutal games there.

So we actually lost two early in the season. Came back later to beat those two teams. And it seemed like every game we started getting a little better. But as far as my involvement it’s. I was in junior high, I wanted to play varsity someday. So I was watching everything from the freshman, the JV to the varsity.

 I would I, I was always talking to the coach. Sometimes he probably would’ve considered me a pest. I was around so much. But but between that and  the, we, we, we had a pretty athletic grade in my year. So there was never any, there never any trouble getting a pickup game going, getting five to 10 guys to go down to the courts and play.

So it was really imbued into the culture and. The crowd that I hung with. And again, with the two guys having the older brothers  playing on the varsity we were friends with them. We looked up to their brothers and it created an even ti tighter connection with us.

[00:09:15] Mike Klinzing: I know that in the book you talk about the games that you had with your rival Amityville and that that was.

A series, you call them a trilogy. And we went with the the Ali Frazier  fi final final analogy. And that, and, and I actually heard and, and listened to you talk to the Long Island History podcast and they talked about how you went and tried to find one of the players from that team, a guy named Paul Smith, and then you actually connected with his son Tristan, who believe it or not, Tom, I don’t know if you know this, but Tristan was on the podcast with us.

And

[00:09:52] Tom McKeown: he talked about, I didn’t admit that.

[00:09:53] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, so he talked about, so when I heard that, and he talked about his experience obviously playing at Amityville, and so just kind of tell the story of how you connected with Paul, who was one of the rivals of that team and his his son, Tristan. Just talk a little bit about that piece of it.

[00:10:08] Tom McKeown: So Paul, Paul was just this incredible athlete in high school. He was a wide receiver and defensive back on the football team. He was like the conference, MVP, he was a guard on the basketball team, an all county sprinter. And he kind of became the face of the opposition to me at least.

But they had, they had a starting five that was  right there with us and a bench that could go and, kind of in the book. I, yeah. As I kind of treat it as a the Ali Frazier trilogy. ’cause it was two, two point games and then one one point triple overtime game. So the last one, I, in my, the chapter in my book, I called it the thriller with the villa kind of staying with the, the Ali Frazier comparison.

But I really wanted to get a a, a hold of Paul. Because I had talked a lot about him more than anybody else on Amityville, as  what he was, what he was doing, and  how how difficult he was to stop and, and watching him. So after I’d written the book and I detailed about him, I’d gone back and looked at the papers.

Newsday and Long Island Press were the big papers back when I was growing up, and they still are on Long Island. And so I’d, I’d written the book and the way I wr decided to write the book was to write the whole thing just from my memory and from the newspaper articles. And then afterwards I went back and fact checked with people.

So it was wasn’t too hard getting ahold of Glenn Vickers and some of the other players and the coach  I tracked down in Florida and then actually went and visited, spent a few days with him, but I really wanted to find Paul Smith. So I found Tristan actually does a podcast out on Long Island.

And I, I commented it on one of his recorded podcasts and said, Hey, I wrote a book. Your father’s very prominent in it. I’d love to talk. And so he and I connected. I, I forget if we connected by phone or however, but  we had a good conversation. I said, well, next time I’m up on Long Island, I’ll give you a call.

And he said well, unfortunately, I live down in Dallas and I know if I told you I live in Dallas, so right turns we’re. 30 minutes away from each other. So I went and had dinner with him and his him and his dad is also like Paul is living down here as well. So I had went down, had dinner with him, we talked and compared notes and everything and you know.

Tristan and I have actually partnered and put together mostly him, but this Long Island history basketball history face, Facebook group that’s taken off like crazy. But yeah, so I caught up with Tristan, who I think went a level above even the people, all the people in this book as far as his, career in high school basketball. I think it was a two time state champ in, you know Suffolk County, long Island, MVP. So he was definitely a, a fo a force.  he might’ve gone dad and won better

[00:12:44] Mike Klinzing: when you wrote the book and you’re sitting down and I think about trying to reflect on different eras in my life.

If I think about junior high. Time, or I think about my junior or senior year of high school, or I think about a year in college, and I try to think about putting together the details of that and, and getting it down on paper and getting it into a book. That, to me, feels kind of daunting and I’m not sure how much I would trust my memory.

There’s obviously certain things would stand.

For the book and you sit down and start kind of going through it. And then obviously as you said, you wrote the book and then you kind of went back and fact checked it and tried to reach out to some of the participants in the story, so to speak. How did you, how did your memory kind of jive with what some of the people that were, some of the main characters in your book, how did your memory jive with some of the things that they, that they remembered?

[00:13:51] Tom McKeown: It was pretty consistent with everybody remembered. I, I will say that everybody remembers that triple overtime against game against amiable just a little bit differently. And there it’s like, did I miss that foul shot in the first overtime regulation time? But, but as far as the gist of the whole book  there were some things I joke that the, the coach down in Florida he’s kidding with me.

No, no. That’s not how this offense work. And he starts down moving salt. On napkins and stuff. This is, I said, I said, I remember that offense. I ran it for seven years. So we kind of had fun with that, but most, mostly everybody pretty much jived up and even to the sense they were like, oh, wow, I don’t even remember that as far as I, and glenn, who was the, the, the star in the book. He was on varsity since he was a freshman, so I guess he had never sat in the stands. So he said, is that what the chant was? Because that’s where the, this is Panther Country was our chant. And he says, I don’t even remember that. I said, well, you were never in the stands, so could you remember?

But yeah. So when I went through the facts and I I had you know everybody, well, Glenn and and and the coach read the book beforehand. They, they were the two ones that you know had the most input. Paul actually, he read it afterwards, had a few things, but he said it was pretty accurate.

I do a flashback to a football game so actually we played Amityville three times in basketball and we played them in the conference football championship. And he had a few things on the, I remember the game as being a rainy, muddy game. And he was telling me, no, it was a dried dust bowl.

And I was like, oh, okay. Well, I.

But pretty much the, the spirit of how it was going and whatever, everybody was at games everybody thought I kind of captured it. Well,

[00:15:36] Mike Klinzing: tell me a little bit more about the structure of Long Island basketball and what made this season so special. Obviously, to be able to have this Long Island Championship, when I was doing the research and looking through and reading the book. I did not realize that the state of New York did not have a state championship.

Right. We go back and we think about the team in Milan, Indiana. Right. And that the movie Hoosiers is based upon where that was in what, I think 1954 maybe. You’re talking about an Indiana State High School basketball championship. And so just tell me a little bit about what, what made it so special? Not only this team, but also the fact that it just happened to with the first year on Long Island where you had this Long Island Championship.

Talk about how impacted of.

[00:16:30] Tom McKeown: Well, it, it it it kind of had two trends colliding. So I, I talk up until 19 74, 75, the highest you could get in New York was a county, or at least a the, there were 11, I think New York State basketball districts, and you could win one of those 11, and that’s where it ended.

But they were they were open championships. So for example, Suffolk County all. 60 teams played in one tournament, or at least the league champs and writes played in one tournament. And that’s the way it was pretty much in then they decided in 74, 75 not to have a state championship. But they decided to let each county champ play one more game.

Okay. So two counties may be playing up in upstate New York, but that’s not as significant as the only two counties playing on Long Island in a championship game. And we had the, the Nassau Coliseum where the Nets were playing at the time, and Julia serving it was only two or. Old. So it was a state of the art, fantastic facility.

And it was also the first year they played the championship. Not only the county championships, but the Long Island Championships there. So it was a, it was a, a championship weekend. I remember it came to the end of that year. It was like on Friday they had was it triple header? They had the Nassau County Championship, the Suffolk County Championship.

And then the Nets played a game with Dr. J. And then on Sunday they had the two championships, which they played after an afternoon net game. So. Championships were double headers with the, with the nets and Dr. J. So that, that was kind of big time for everybody. But the other thing that was kind of going in the other direction is the by the end of the decade, the 79 80, the, the tournaments started breaking up into A, B, c, D champions. So there was the schools were playing their own size teams. So New York actually never had an open state championship by the time they were getting to play each other, they were dividing it up into levels. So it kind of represented the end of one era and the beginning of another era.

And I’d probably say, you know that when the Long Island Championships took place that was probably as big an open championship as as took place in New York because even when you got to the state championships and you’re playing the A, B and C, I don’t know if there were 130 schools in those, in those tournaments.

There, there might’ve been. But so that was kind of special. It was the first in that, and it was also the seventies was an era where long Island basketball particularly Suffolk County. No, all of Long Island really took off. The beginning of the seventies. We had Mitch Kak played for Brentwood and he went on to start North Carolina and the NBA we had Glen who was  a parade or a a all first team, all high school, all American, Jeff Ruland came.

After that. We had a lot of great talent that played Division one basketball. And I talk a little about. Book the quarter, the semi-finals before with the, the Champ. The Champ First Championships in Nassau Coliseum was played in this really big gym out at Ward Melville, which is a location out on Long Island and.

Biggest gym on at least in Suffolk County. And all of the pro coach, all the college coaches and everything started showing up at that game. So we’re at the game to watch  us hopefully get to the county championship. And Luke Kano, Secka, Jane Chz is popping through the door.

Lefty Driesell Denny Cru from Louisville. And over the next even after that year and the year subsequent, you’d always see like five to 10 top flight college coaches going to those semi-final games. So it, it was really a kind of a golden era of basketball for long Island, and it k kind of launched into it.

And so it was, it was, it was really special to be around. You’d see guys playing high school or guys you played against in high school, and then you’d see them in TV playing for the A, c, C and all these great teams. So it was, it was a lot very special in that regard as well.

[00:20:22] Mike Klinzing: My understanding that you went up to some of those coaches and talked to ’em during those games.

[00:20:28] Tom McKeown: I was, I was a paparazzi or whatever. If I, if I saw someone famous, I was an up to it.  so, yeah, saw, so Con Conco was at that, that first game. And he had actually was the coach of the Nets for a couple years. He went to St. John’s, he went to the Nets and then back to St. John’s. So he had even a little.

Added celebrity status to it. So yeah. But they were, they were, they were all very personal. Of course, I ran right up and talked to him. And same thing for Lefty Driesell. I don’t know if you remember Lefty Driesell coaching at Maryland, but he, he, he had an accent. I couldn’t understand a word he said.

Absolutely. He said, I might’ve been his first time up north. I don’t know. But but yeah, so you went up and talked to them and they were all just, just good guys. But they, they were really there looking at the talent you.

[00:21:11] Mike Klinzing: Another small world moment for you. We had Lefty Elle’s grandson, Ty Anderson, who is currently, he’s a coach at Wofford College, and we had him on, I don’t know, maybe two, three weeks ago.

So yeah, it’s a, again, there’s the basketball world is just so interconnected. It really is. It really is kind of amazing when you look at just how, I mean you think about those guys and just the names of Lefty Gisele, Luke Cari, Denny Crumb, and those are names of guys that  I grew up as watching them as icons of the college game, and here you are a kid who at the time you’re in eighth grade and you just get to walk up to him at an arena a little bit different than what the situations are that we would have.

Today, but certainly a very cool experience for  for, for you back in that time and, and then being able to see those guys that, as you said, that you played against, that you watched play. And then to be able to see them go on and, and have success, the college level and in some cases at the pro level, I think is  is really special.

How fi how, how much did you follow Gary Vickers career when he went on to, I.

[00:22:24] Tom McKeown: Glen Vickers. So Glen I, I followed his career closely because first off, he was he did, he, he could have gone to a, a lot of schools further away in the country, but he he came, he came across a really great salesman.

Jim Fno was the, coach at Iona, he just started as a coach. I think, I forget where he was before that, but before he went on to North Carolina State and he really sold hard to get to get Glen to come to Iona. And by getting Glen he was able Glen was very high regarded amongst his peers and competitors.

And by getting Glen, he was able to recruit practically a, a Long Island High School All-Star team. There was another, another, a player Kevin Hamilton out of North Babylon, who, who was probably the second best guard to Glen on the island. There was this powerful center, Jeff Ruland, who went on to a great NBA career as who went to Iona.

And there were several other players got there. So Valvano actually prune the Long Island. Picked the Long Island talent and created a, a national contender at Iona who hadn’t had a 500 team as far as I remember until that year. But with Glen playing at Iona, he was. He was always a we could go see him play.

He played three or four times at Madison Square Garden that I remember. I went to see him and his his family always got complimentary tickets to the game. So I saw him play St. John Seton Hall. A lot of great games at the garden. And one, one game we saw Glen’s older brother, Willie Vickers was actually, played at Hofstra. So he was a senior at Hofstra when Glen was a freshman at Iona. And there was actually a game where they played each other and I think that was as big as the Long Island Championship. I think everybody in Babylon showed up for that game. And Willie actually clamped in Clamped Glen down a little bit.

Glen ended up having the better career, but Willie had the better night that night.

[00:24:11] Mike Klinzing: It’s funny, just when you think about the opportunity to be able to watch guys who have.  that you’ve had the opportunity to play with and, and against, and that you’ve had an opportunity to see in person and obviously in your case with the Vicar family  being close with them and, and kind of growing up and being in their household, and then getting an opportunity to see as Glen went on, to have a tremendous amount of success moving forward.

And, and again, we’re still close enough. At Iona where you could still be able to go see him play and be able to follow him. It’s not like it’s today where he could have gone halfway across the country and you could have still kept tabs and watched every, watched every game that he would’ve played had he decided to go go to the Midwest or go to the south, or go out west, he wouldn’t have had.

To see him, but the fact that he kind of remained in the city gave you an opportunity to still kind of follow his career, which I think is probably something special. I’m sure it’s something that retrospectively that his family and his brother I’m sure appreciated.

[00:25:12] Tom McKeown: Yeah. And, and he, he was always such a down to earth guy.

I mean, I remember in high school, and I talk about a couple instances in the book he was a rock star and yet anybody came up to him in the hallways during school and said, Hey. Glen, great game. Glen would actually stop and talk to, and kind of start talking about, really, I missed that foul shot.

I can’t, but yeah, I mean, he was, he was, he was that, that genuine and that never stopped. Even when he went to Iona we’d see them after the games sometimes, and he always remembered all of us. And he’d, he’d ask how by the time he was in college, I was playing varsity with, his younger brother, Brian and Ernie who who I’d kind of come up the ranks with.

So it was it was yeah, he was just always, and  we, we reconnected when I was writing the book and  had lunches together and everything and reminisced about everything and it was a really, really special catching up, particularly with him. And the coach down in Florida was my favorite part of doing the writing.

Yeah. What was

[00:26:07] Mike Klinzing: the most surprising detail story? Something that either you remembered that maybe you had kind of lost in the recesses in your mind, or something that somebody else brought to your attention that you learned as you were, as you were writing, going through the process of writing the book.

Is there, is there one thing that as kind of surprised you? Like, oh, I didn’t remember that, or, oh, I did remember that, but I didn’t realize what a big role that played in the.

[00:26:33] Tom McKeown: Well, the, the couple of smaller things  first off, I, I thought so the year before we won that Long Island show, or we, we we went the year of the book, the year before we had won the league championship, and I thought that was our first league championship.

I’d hear the program was not great before then, but the coach actually read the book and he said, no, no, we won two league champions just before that. We just never won a county playoff game. And another part was at the end of the, the triple overtime game. It, it was a one point one point game and the, the losing team got a shot off.

And it’s all sorts of memories. How that, did that ball hit the rim? Did it rattle out?  could not even come close. Where did they throw it in from? But everybody had a, a different memory, but they, every, everybody was up. That, that, that shot got off and it hung in the air for about a thousand seconds.

 it would’ve been different title to the book if that ball had gone in.

[00:27:32] Mike Klinzing: What’s funny is, is that obviously today, if that game were to be played, there’d be a record of it. Now, maybe the huddle camera would’ve pivoted with its AI and missed the corner depending on where the shot was. But generally speaking, somebody would’ve had their phone out or been recording it.

Nobody has that video. So all the different interpretations that people have who’ve participated in that game. And Jason’s heard me tell this story before about my final game in high school. There was a shot that we were up by three. There was a shot that was taken that I swear the kids’ feet were on the line.

I have my college teammate who actually played against in that game swears that the kids’ feet were behind the line. There’s no video of. Shot. So it’s just like all we can do is argue over what happened in that moment. And there’s a part of me that wishes that there was video and then there’s a part of me that is kind of glad that there isn’t, even though I feel like I know I’m right.

So, Harold, if you’re out there listening, I, I still think I’m right and the shot was a two, not a three, and we should won that game. But anyway, it’s just funny that you have this memory and everybody was there in the gym in that game, and.

This person, this person, everybody kind of has. Their mind of what happened. And nobody, nobody was like

[00:29:04] Tom McKeown: hardcore on it. They were all like, really? I thought it hit the rim. Or you really, yeah. Right.

[00:29:08] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:29:10] Tom McKeown: Exactly. And part of, and the the other things that I point out in the book just you, you triggered it when you said something for there was no three point line back then and there was no shot clock.

So you know it, it was really a game, a discipline  so we, again, we ran this offense, which could be run slow or it could be run fast. And  the. The coach Roy Cobel just  do not shoot unless you have a good shot. And they would work that thing back and forth, back and forth.

And they, they’d put teams to sleep ’cause they were  just so disciplined to be able to do it. But they didn’t have to get a shot off if they didn’t have a good shot. So yeah, I think it was, not until like 1987, they had a three point shot and a shot clock on Long Island.

So it was, it was pretty much the same going forward. So it was, it was a different era from that standpoint. And I, I joke, I was, I was a guard and I said that was definitely a, a great time for forwards. ’cause an outside shot counted the same as, as an inside shot. So you better have a good reason if you took an outside.

[00:30:09] Mike Klinzing: That’s true. That is true. The game has definitely changed since 1987 when the, the three point line. I think that was the same year it came to Ohio. ’cause I was a senior in 1988 and I think it came in, if I’m not mistaken. I think when it, I was a junior. I don’t think we had it when I was a sophomore. I.

And I think it came in as when I was a junior. And of course at that time, nobody really knew the way that basketball was going to morph into what we see today, the number of threes that are being shot today. Even when the line came in, nobody, players and coaches really had any idea how to. How do you utilize it?

And there were very few players who could shoot it back in that day. Whereas now you look at whether it’s high school teams, college teams, or certainly in the NBA, almost every player can step out beyond that line and at least credibly put the ball up there, or at least think they can anyway. People aren’t afraid to shoot it, let’s put it that way.

[00:30:56] Tom McKeown: Yeah. And, and, and coaches build it into the offense it’s like, you know.

[00:31:00] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely.

[00:31:01] Tom McKeown: I, I, I can’t imagine  my coach, he, he actually the coach of that team, he would’ve adapted, but he, he liked that working around get, getting it down to the pivot. So so he I don’t know. He, he would’ve, he would’ve doubted.

We had some good outside shooters on that team as well.

[00:31:20] Mike Klinzing: When did the idea of writing the book first. To your mind and, and what was the process for making it happen? Were you, before you started it, were you a con, were you a confident author going into it where you thought, Hey, I, I, I, I’m going to have no problem writing this book.

Were you, were you nervous to start getting it and seeing if you could go through the process? Just what was your mindset and when did the idea first kind of take hold?

[00:31:48] Tom McKeown: Well, actually, the first time I thought about writing it was when I saw the movie Hoosiers. I was thinking, that’s a long time ago.

That’s a long time ago. Yeah. Yeah. That was 1986 or whatever. And I’m thinking, God, I was witness to a story at least just as good as that, and I don’t have to make up  a, a fictional version of it. And I actually tried to write a book about a different subject back in 2001. And I shopped it around to some publishers and it would, they, they would, they all gave me some feedback that it was totally undisciplined and you gotta, so I actually took some courses over the next 10 years or so.

But, you know like yourself, I had young kids in the early two thousands, so I had to kind of put that off for a living and stuff like that. During the course of my professional career, I started writing a lot of articles for professional publications. And so I, I, I kind of honed my craft a little bit.

And then finally, I I got to the stage where  I started a company, I sold it to another company, and I, I had some time off and I was like okay. I’m.

I was able to put together all I learned and really the story did just start flowing out. ’cause I had it all in my mind. And then I got some archive subscriptions to the newspapers that I told you about. And  using the four months of the season as kind of like a ruler I would go from game to game.

And then fill in between the games, what was going on socially in the town and  introduce the town and the different areas and the the people who shaped it and everything. So it, it kind of fit to my kind of mathematical, numerical nature, the way I could write it that way.

And and then, yeah, the dialogue, it just, it just came out. ’cause I, I I had a very good memory and everybody was starting everybody’s in their sixties now, so I’m like, yeah, I gotta get this. Somebody’s gotta get this written so that nobody forgets it. And Right. And fortunately I was able to do it.

We had a, we had a big launch of the book in back in Babylon, in my hometown. Right across the street from the gymnasium at the American Legion Hall, about six or seven of the players showed up, both coaches, where the coach from Florida came all the way up. He wasn’t initially going to come, but his children said, no, you gotta get up for that.

So they, so they, they took him up and so he came up and I think he’d always been itching to have a reunion with that group as well. So it it really served that purpose. And yeah, so it’s the, the, the, the, the village was really behind it and, we’re originally going to have it at the Historical Society Museum, but it grew too big, so we had to move it.

And but yeah, it’s been a great experience and very little questioning of  what, what happened more along, along the lines of, God, that was such a great time. Yeah, I remember this. I gotta remember the Nassau Coliseum or  seeing the, the games there and playing.

So it. I think for everybody who’s read it it’s been a trip down memory lane and people who weren’t a part of it that have reached out to me who’ve read it, are just it triggers the their own childhood or their own memory. I. Everybody has a story like this. So  I was I was getting some flyers made up here in Dallas, and a lady was behind me and she said, what’s that?

And I said, I just wrote a book about my high school basketball team.  they won a championship back in the seventies. She went immediately from my daddy was a football coach in Abilene. So, so everybody it’s like, I, I say to my wife all the time, if I could Monet, monetize. The triggering of that memory from everybody.

Right. You know? Yeah. Because  like yourself just talking about you remembering  championships and growing up and playing. Yeah. I think it it, it, it kind of triggers that in a, in a lot, most people. Yeah.

[00:35:23] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. And I think not only when you read the book, not only do does it trigger you if you are a member of a team in high school, but I think there’s also just generalized.

High school memories and things. When you talk about just the, the parties, when you talk about just the connection between people you’ve got a little boy girl relationship stuff in there that kind of is, is sprinkled in that everybody who’s been in high school there, there’s something in the book that I think anybody can relate to, and certainly if you’ve played sports or you’re a fan of a team, you think about again, there are still some pockets.

In America where you have the same level of support for high school sports and the student body, but I think it’s getting more difficult to generate that same level of connection that, yeah, I’m sure that the, the city of Babylon and the student body at the high school felt for that team just because.

There’s so many more distractions. Kids carry around a distraction machine in their pocket all the time. That, and so you don’t have the same level necessarily always. Not, not everywhere, but you don’t have the same level of participation in terms of students attending games and, and doing things that were more common back in that era.

But certainly it doesn’t surprise me at all that when people read or see or hear about the book, that it does trigger something in. Some memory of high school.

When they read it, they’re like, oh yeah, I remember when this happened to me. And they can kind of reframe it around their own story. And I think that’s sort of the best part of the book is that, yeah, you’re telling that story, but then you’re also, as the reader, you’re also being kind of taken back through your own memory lane as well to to your high school years.

And that’s one of the things.

The experience, that experience that you had with that, with that Panther team? For sure.

[00:37:29] Tom McKeown: Yeah. And it’s funny, I I, I joke all of course everybody’s like this it was, it’s funner reliving high school than it was actually living it. You, yeah. You cut out all the, all the stuff you don’t want to remember, but yeah, well it was a, it was a special town ’cause, and then back. Back then we, we wrote our, I don’t point out this much in the book because it was winter but we, we, we rode our bicycles everywhere back then. Everybody had a bicycle and  you were one part of town one night, another part of town another night you were passing, you know.

Bicycles there were 10 speed bicycles all, all over that town somewhere. And it was funny someone reached out to me today and said it seemed like a, a pretty nice area you lived in and you still had to lock up your bicycle. And I was like, oh no, you always locked up your bicycle. I think everybody I grew up with, regardless of where they lived, had had a bicycle stolen.

So it was like, if you were, that was not, your bicycle was not in the garage, you had lock on.

[00:38:24] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I do miss bicycles in neighborhoods. I’ll say that when I think about my time as a child and just, and then part of me also looks at some of the places that I rode as a kid. ’cause I actually live right now in the town where I grew up. And so I look at some of the places where I rode when I was a kid.

And I think, and my parents were crazy for allowing me to ride that far on those roads when I was 10 or 11 years old. But it was just, again, a different, a different era. The way parent Yeah. They didn’t the whatever, the,

[00:38:54] Tom McKeown: the finding thing on the phone so they’d know where you were and then Correct. Yeah.

Be home at six

[00:39:00] Mike Klinzing: for dinner. Right. For sure. Right, for sure. For sure. There, there was definitely, there was definitely no knowing. It was kind of like, I’m going out, I’ll see you back here whenever, and it was just, again, a different, different era of parenting, different era of childhoods, and I always say, I’m.

Really glad that I grew up in the era that I did, and in some ways our kids have it better, but in, in a lot of ways, I feel like the way that you or I grew up, just being able to kind of be out in the neighborhood and playing with our friends and riding our bikes and doing all those kinds of things are, it’s you.

It’s easy to get nostalgic and your book certainly does a good job of. Of painting that picture of what, that, what that time was like. And although, again, not everybody grew up on Long Island, you can certainly, just like we talked about with high school, you can certainly find bits and pieces of your own community and sort of your own experience if you, if you live through that time period by, by reading the book how often and if  

[00:39:53] Tom McKeown: like the, and the families.

I, I, I, I don’t point it out, it. Everybody’s mother was everybody’s mother.  like if you know my friends over my house, my mother treated them like kids and vice versa, all the others it was just it was very, a very communal amongst the families as in addition to the kids being close.

So it was yeah, it was a, it was a, it was very tight community all over him.

[00:40:17] Mike Klinzing: When you sat down to write. How long did you write for a session? When you sat down, did you always sit down and say, I’m going to write for an hour today? Did you write until you felt like, okay, I’m kind of out of ideas for the day?

Or what was your process like day to day?

[00:40:30] Tom McKeown: Well actually I had read somewhere that Hemingway would try to write 500 words a day. So I was trying to do that, but I actually had a lot going. So I actually gotta the point I was writing a thousand words a day. So I would wrote, write six days a week, always in the morning  when I was most alert.

And I, I had an editor who, who worked with me where I would do three chapters and then I would kick it over to him and. He didn’t do much reshaping of the story, per se. He did a lot of editing. He, he was the one who told me to introduce the romance angle. So he said that, he’s like do you have any kind of romance angle?

No. I was 13 said, there a girl I had a crush on said, no, that’s great. Put that in. I said, okay, well there, I’ll have to let her know. But, but yeah, so at, at that pace I was able to get the the first draft done in like six, seven months. And then  then I worked more closely with the publisher to it and style it and everything, but the, the original draft was pretty much 90% complete.  I, I went back again, as I said and talked, toed up some of the facts and stuff like that. Yeah, it was, it was, I, I, I didn’t experience writer’s block the, the entire time I wrote it. It was like I, every time I, I sat down, yeah.

I would write up to this game and then I would write up to this game, and then I would write up to this game. And like I said, that was kind of the ruler. It was the games and then what happened in between the games socially. So it was, pretty, pretty, I wouldn’t say easy, but it would, it came very it, it really came out.

And  the, the classes that I had taken and that I had gotten feedback on a prior book, I, I was able to craft it a lot better. Who

[00:42:09] Mike Klinzing: was the first person that you had read the book other than the editor?

[00:42:14] Tom McKeown: The first person I had oh, well, the first person I had to read the book was the coach.

Yeah, I I, I, I’d connected with him and we had agreed, well, the editor, yeah, the editor read the whole thing. But the the coach I, I wanted to get his blessing. ’cause even when I was kind of talking to him about things that were in the book and I was changing stuff, I was like, okay, may, maybe there’s some stuff here.

I, I, I, so I said, Hey he’d already agreed that I was going to come down and visit him. So I sent him a, I sent him a copy ahead of time and he read it before I got there. And, and, and he was like, God, this is magnificent. How did you remember all this?  I was expecting him to beat me up. I wasn’t that

[00:42:50] Mike Klinzing: I think here’s what I, here’s what I would guess is that. Anybody who was given the opportunity to sort of have a book like this presented to them about something in their life that I’m sure obviously that season was very important to him and obviously for the number of years that he coached and, and how important.

The, those teams and players, and we all know that if you’ve been part of a team, whether you’ve been part of it as a coach or a player, how important those moments and those memories are. So like if somebody were to come to me, one of my teammates were to come to me from the time when I was playing college basketball or high school basketball, or if somebody came to me who I coached with early on in my career and said, Hey, I’ve got a book about such and such season, I would be ecstatic.

To read it and to, to kind of hear their perspective on it. And I’m sure just like some of the things that you brought up and that you brought to light, that maybe some of those guys that were a part of that team, maybe they didn’t even remember, or maybe they did remember, but they might not have remembered on their own.

I mean, I think there’s all kinds of things, right? That I have friends from high school that. We’ll be on like a text chain and they’ll say, Hey, do you remember such and such happened? And if I would’ve had to recall that incident on my own, I don’t know if I would’ve recalled it. But when they can kind of provide some of the framework and the details, then that makes me, it kind of jogs my memory and back to moment relive it.

Everybody who. A character in this story who was a part of that special season. I’m sure they all expressed their gratitude to you, but I’m sure they probably even felt even more gratitude to you for kind of bringing that story to life.

[00:44:34] Tom McKeown: And the, the other thing that he did say was  he, he I was, he said I, he was so invested in the team and getting them ready, and he said he had no idea that it had had this the effect it was having on the rest of the community.

 that we were all, we. Trying to get rides to the games. And now that you know how the, the dad, how we were, yeah, I was, my dad and I were talking about at dinnertime, practically every night, Hey, the varsity won again. It looks like they’re going to get the top seat in the playoffs.  things like that.

And yeah, he, that was the one thing he said seeing how what he was doing with the team was affecting the rest of the community at dinner, dinner tables and the local vendors and stuff like that. Which  you’re so. Ingrained in what you’re doing there that  you, you don’t look up and see, look at this great effect it’s having on everybody else as well.

[00:45:20] Mike Klinzing: Percentage of the games that did you actually.

[00:45:25] Tom McKeown: I missed three or four games. And I talk about this in the book because the the varsity games were played Tuesday afternoons and Friday nights. If it was a Tuesday afternoon away game, I was on the junior high team. We were practicing then. So we, we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t, there was no way we could get to those games.

If those were home games, then we would do our practices, get ’em done, and then go to see the game. So I, I missed like three or four games. What, however many there were that were. Tuesday away games. I, I missed all of those. But I was at every Friday night home and away and all the playoff games.

So it was I, I, I pretty much, pretty much saw them all. And I, the, the key was getting my, was getting my father to go. I I, the book actually accomplished two things for me. I wanted to tell this  great story about. The basketball team and growing up. But I’d always wanted to write a book about my relationship with my father, ’cause he died young in 1980.

So didn’t get to spend as much time as I liked, but it, the seventies was our decade together. I was playing basketball, I was watching basketball, and, and he was just such a basketball fan himself.  once I, once I got him interested in the team, he wanted to go to the away games too.

And that may be somewhat popular. ’cause when you have a car that’s going, you get three or four friends, you’re like, Hey, can I get a ride to the game? All, all of a sudden you’re, you’re a rock star amongst your friends and yeah, you can invite the girls that you have crushes on and so. Yeah.

And then all the conversations we had in the car. So it’s like sometimes it’d be just him and I and, but we, we’d always talk about life in school and  so it was  there was that part of it as well that that was a big part of his relationship. And my relationship with him is I, I was the only one in my family who was a real sports nut and he, he and I talked about that a lot.

And we’d also often going to games during the season. We’d drive off to summer league camps and. Games over the summer and sports. So a lot, a, a lot of the best moments of my life were sitting in the front seat next to my father, driving somewhere where he was kind of just mine and we could talk about life, sports, school, whatever.

[00:47:28] Mike Klinzing: Very cool that the book served that purpose for you, in addition to being able to tell the story of that special season, but to be able to also. Sort of go back and and relive and talk about that relationship with your dad. And again, if you read the book, you can feel that in terms of just your connection with the community, with your family, with your teammates, with the guys that you looked up to on the varsity.

There’s all these different. Sort of threads, right, of connection that go out from, from you and I kind of perspective.

It, it made it for, for interesting reading because although you were involved in the story, you weren’t directly on the team, so you were kind of this almost  floating above the team. Kind of looking at it from this outside perspective as opposed to somebody who maybe it’s sort of the can’t see the forest for the trees.

You were kind of able to see the whole picture, whereas maybe somebody who had been on the team might. Maybe had some more insider details, but might not have had the whole big picture sort of effect, like you said, when you talked to the coach and he’s, he didn’t see the bigger picture of the impact it was having on the community.

And so I think that to be able to kind of serve all those different purposes I think again, speaks to how well done the, the, the book really is.

[00:48:56] Tom McKeown: Yeah. And from a memoir standpoint, usually the memoir is the, the person writing it is the protagonist, as we say in the book. Right. But this was more like Great Gatsby ish where the guy telling the story was telling the story about the protagonist which was the team.

And you know Glenn and, and Coach Cowell being the principal faces of the team. Since the book’s been out,

[00:49:19] Mike Klinzing: has there been anybody that has reached out to you? Maybe you didn’t know that has some connection to Long Island basketball that just, it wasn’t connected to the story, but just said, Hey, this book really resonated with me after I had a chance to read it.

Is there anybody famous? Not famous, just anybody who reached out to you that the book had an impact on, who wasn’t again, directly related to the story?

[00:49:45] Tom McKeown: Oh, well. Well, one guy, I wouldn’t say he reached out to me, I reached out to him was one of the quotes I have on the book was a guy named Matt Doherty you’re probably familiar with that name.

He played on the 82 National Championship coach North Carolina. Coached Notre Dame.

[00:49:59] Mike Klinzing: Former, former, former guest in the podcast.

[00:50:02] Tom McKeown: Your, I I was going to ask, I was going to ask if he was that, I’m sure you would’ve had

[00:50:08] Mike Klinzing: we, Mike.

[00:50:09] Tom McKeown: Yeah.

[00:50:09] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, we’ve had him on twice and I’m, I’m a big, I’m a big North Carolina guy, so that the North Carolina Michael Jordan, freshman year, the Jump shot team with Matt Doherty and Jimmy Black and Worthy, and Sam Perkins and that whole group that’s probably my favorite college team of all time.

So it was a, it was a thrill for me to be able to have Matt Dougherty on, and I know he’s a Long Island guy, so. And I saw that he did put, put a little blurb on your book. So what was the conversation like with him when you reached out to him?

[00:50:37] Tom McKeown: I, I reached out to him and it was actually through LinkedIn.

We we’d connected and I, I, I just sent him a, a chat and said Hey Matt, I know you’re a long Island basketball roots. I’ve written a book about this era. A guy from that team was actually a freshman on the team, Chris. Rust was on that 1982 North Carolina team as well. So he had been a teammate of mine as well.

But I reached out to Matt and just said  I’d love it if you would, if you read it. And he said, absolutely, send a copy over. So I sent it over to him and I, I had to bug him a couple of times, so I was like, about a couple of, say, busy guy. And then finally he said, okay. It was like, christmas a couple days before Christmas, he said, okay, I’m, I’ve got nothing scheduled next week. I promise I’ll get your book written read by before New Year’s. So, yeah, so he he, he, he calls me back like the, the week after Christmas and said, God, if he said, I felt like I was, I was reliving my life I was driving with my father to basketball games all the time, riding my bicycle in the snow in the winter.

He said, I remember Glen Vickers. He was my idol. And  all of that. Great team of that year. And he, he, he played in one of the Catholic schools, holy Trinity. But he was in Nassau County, but he, I, I think, trying to remember, I think he said he might have been at that Suffolk County champion that or that first Long Island championship game.

But yeah, I was, and I was expecting him to more like kind of just check. Yeah. I said I’d do it, so I’d do it. But his enthusiastic response to how much, how the memories have brought up for him was, was, was really special. And I was I was, I was happy that he was that thrilled with the, with the final product as he was.

[00:52:09] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Very cool. And again, I think that for anybody who. Grew up in that era for anybody who has played on a high school basketball team, I think you can find things that will resonate regardless of where in the country you grew up, regardless of what your experience was like there. There’s definitely some common themes that I think run through most people’s high school experience, especially if you’re a high school athlete and then obviously you have, if you have the connection like Matt did of of growing up in the area where some of those things are even more familiar to you just because.

To the experiences that you had and so reach out to and gracious enough to his, you.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, before we wrap up, I want to give you a chance, one more time to share if you have any, anything else that, that, that you’d like people to know about the book. And then again, just share the title again, share where people can get it, share how people can connect with you, and we’ll get all that in the show notes and, and put all that on the, on the website and so people can find it.

But just go ahead and kind of give your give your last pitch for the book.

[00:53:25] Tom McKeown: Okay, well here’s a copy of the book here. The book is, This is Panther Country. It’s available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble. Everybody books, if you want a little more in depth on it, I have a website. It’s tommckeownbooks.com

And in addition to having an overview of the book and a background on the author, on the news and media page, I have a link to all the content that I’ve done with the book. I plan on putting the link to this podcast on there. But any articles reviews, interviews I’ve done elsewhere are all on there recorded so you can get to it.

So you can relive your childhood, even if you weren’t born in that era. It takes you back to high school and all those things. It made you a little insecure, but were so worth living during that time that I think sports fan, not sports fan, you’d really enjoy this book if you like a good coming of age story.

[00:54:24] Mike Klinzing: I could not agree more. It’s really well done Tom. I really enjoyed the opportunity to read This is Panther Country. To all of our audience out there, please go out, support Tom, pick up a copy of the book as he said, and as we’ve said on the podcast, I think yo’ll enjoy it. You’ll get transported back to your high school years and it’ll trigger some memories that maybe you haven’t thought about in a long time.

So please pick up a copy of This is Panther Country. Tom cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to jump on tonight and join us. Congratulations on the book again. It’s very well done. And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode.  Thanks.